CONFIDENT BROWNS LOOKING FOR MUCH DIFFERENT RESULT
By STEVE KING
The Browns are once again brimming with confidence as they return to the scene of the crime almost exactly 20 years later.
It was Aug. 14, 1999 when the expansion Browns, fresh off an emotion-charged 20-17 overtime victory over the Dallas Cowboys just five days earlier in their debut in the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, journeyed to Tampa Bay to play the Buccaneers in a preseason contest.
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It was a night to forget. The Browns got clobbered 30-3, and it wasn’t even that close.
Did we mention there was also a 2½-hour delay because of a lightning storm?
It was a sign of things to come, as the Browns finished with a then franchise-worst 2-14, getting this new era off to a frightful start. In reality, the Browns still haven’t gotten on track, at least not for longer than a relative blink of an eye.
Now it’s 2019 and these new-look Browns, 2-0 in the preseason and with the distinction of being the team that everybody is watching, are back in Tampa on Friday night at 7:30 to face the Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium.
This time, the optimism seems well-founded. There is too much talent for it not to be the case.
Though Browns head coach Freddie Kitchens doesn’t call it a traditional dress rehearsal for the regular season, the tag that is usually reserved for the third preseason game, he will have a lot of his starters playing for an undetermined amount of time. The starters played only the first series in the opener, and did not see any action last week.
But despite the dearth of playing time in the preseason, the Browns have been put through their paces on a daily basis in training camp, which ended Wednesday. It’s probably the hardest camp the Browns have had in this re-born era.
Kitchens may make it even harder if the Browns lose 30-3.
8-22-19 A DAY TO RMEMBER – SEEMINGLY EVERY DAY
Wow!
Double-wow!!
Where do I start? Where does anyone start with the best story in all of sports right now, and one of the best in quite some time, and that is this rags-to-riches Cinderella tale that is the Browns and their seemingly overnight transformation?
W can say this – you, me and everyone can say this — every day about the Browns, the darlings of the NFL as they are perched at the center of the sports universe.
But make no absolutely no mistake about, even with this plethora of news all the time about the Browns, Tuesday was still a red-letter day – one of the best and most memorable since things began their seismic shift following the 0-16 finish in 2017 that culminated a two-year run of 1-31.
The Browns are on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s season preview issue that’s out this week.
Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield raised a lot of eyebrows with his remarks in GQ and SI.
The New York Football Giants are spitting mad about those remarks.
Browns head coach Freddie Kitchens doesn’t care one bit about having his team having a bullseye on its back.
Other than that, nothing is going on.
Embrace the new reality, Browns fans. This stuff – fun, controversial, bold, true, wild, crazy, confident and so very quotable – is what happens when a team is not just relevant again, but up at, or near, the front of the pack in the estimation of plenty of people.
No more of that sad-sack losing stuff, defeats being piled on top of one another in the grave the Browns had been digging for themselves for way too long is this miserable expansion era.
Now, will the Browns fulfill all these expectations? Who knows? We’ll just have to wait and see.
But in the meantime, isn’t it so much more enjoyable than it was just a relatively short time ago?
Football is supposed to enjoyable, so simply take it all in. You, Browns fans, deserve to treat yourself like this.
8-21-19 IN THE BIG PICTURE, WE JUST NEED TO RELAX, TRUST AND HAVE FAITH
I keep telling you – and I mean it; it’s not just some kind of sales pitch – that, for good, bad or indifferent, you’re going to read things on this website, Browns Daily Dose, that you’re not going to see anywhere else.
As such, then, I will admit that I am – and possibly some of you are, too – looking through this Browns kicking problem through as many as three different lenses.
First of all, there’s the lens that makes us understand completely that if they don’t get this solved – and I mean not just a little bit solved or only halfway solved, but completely, without-a-doubt solved as in hitting the target dead-square in the middle of the bulls eye – then they will have absolutely no chance to be all they can be this season, whatever that is.
Most of these NFL games are close – so close, in fact, that they are many times decided by a kick in the end. And if you don’t have a good kicker, then you – in this case, the Browns – are going to be the ones getting kicked in the end, in the end, if you get my drift.
Secondly, I really do want the Browns to try to sign Phil Dawson. He’s the best man for the job, and that type of out-of-t-box thinking in going out there and getting him is right up Browns General Manager John Dorsey’s alley. What a great story that would be in so many ways. Dawson never got to play on a really good Browns team, and he could return to a really good tam and possibly play a large role in making it great.
And the third lens – and the most important on when you get right down to it — is realizing that this is not the past, where knuckleheads like Joe Banner, who started this kicking mess by refusing to even negotiate with Dawson and instead letting him walk away in free agency after the 2012 season, his sidekick, Mike Lombardi, plus Ray Farmer and Sashi Brown, are not making the decisions anymore. If they were, then this would be a disaster that would just keep getting worse.
Instead – and so thankfully so – the Browns have Dorsey, a really good front office and a guy who I think will turn out to be an excellent head coach in Freddie Kitchens, all working together to call the shots. They haven’t failed this organization yet – they got the quarterback, didn’t they? – and there’s no reason to believe they’ll fail it now with this all-important situation. They’ll figure out.
So everybody, including me, just needs to step back, take a deep breath and relax, trust and have faith.
Really.
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